


A Short History of Almost Something

by dykejonze



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Chronological, Pre ACWNR, post ACWNR, sorry im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 04:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6315334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykejonze/pseuds/dykejonze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thought there would be more time. It was pathetic, really. Stupid and naive, but here he is without them-- without <i>him</i> -- and all he can think as he hides away what little evidence of <i>them</i> is left is that he thought there would be more time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Short History of Almost Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guttersharkk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guttersharkk/gifts).



> pre/post acwnr, levi/farlan is a perfect and beautiful ship and everyone pretends they're just galpals even though they're practically canon. i've been working on this stupid story for like 3 weeks because im an emotional cripple and avoid everything that makes me feel.

He thought there would be more time. It was pathetic, really. Stupid and naive, but here he is without them-- without  _ him _ \-- and all he can think as he hides away what little evidence of  _ them  _ is left is that he thought there would be more time. It was never supposed to end that way, with them gone and him alone. With him standing whole and they’re… he doesn’t have to close his eyes to see what was left. He sees it everywhere, on his return to the wall, in the stables, in the barracks with him now with his knuckles white and his clothes stained red. Isabel, screaming and he couldn’t save her. Her head at his feet, her eyes, that fear. 

 

Farlan…  _ Farlan. _

 

The shirt clutched tight in Levi’s hand is-- _ was _ \-- his, and he presses his face into it, breathing in deep and slow. It smells like him, like him alive, like being pressed into his chest but without the warmth and without the laughter that rang out as Levi would try to squirm away, annoyed, and Levi’s chest aches now as he finds himself wondering why he would never just stay there.

 

_ “Not here, asshole. Later.” _

 

He just thought there would be more time. 

 

Farlan waving, his face resigned with a final smile. Accepting. How fitting. The sky could open up and take a literal shit on Farlan Church’s head and he would have waved and smiled, accepting. He’d kissed Levi that morning behind the stables, tried to anyway. Levi had clicked his tongue, nudged him away and met Farlan’s whining protests with a sigh. He was always a stickler for privacy, and the wafting aroma of horse shit was anything but romantic.

 

“ _ Later.”  _

 

There was supposed to have been a later. They were supposed to have more time. 

 

He shoves the shirt under his pillow and tells himself he’ll throw it away, but he doesn’t.

 

***

 

Their house was more of a shack compared to the houses people lived in above ground, but it was better than being pressed against the wall of some shop or another on the streets, hoping the meager contact was enough to keep a body warm enough to make it through another night. He used to sleep in worse places, and so did Farlan, and their shack might as well have been a palace compared to everything else. They kept it clean, did what they could with what little they had. Decent furniture was hard to come by and tasteful decor was nearly out of the question, but they turned the place into a proper home the best they could and it worked well enough for them. The door locked. It was theirs. 

 

Levi couldn’t remember anymore when it was that he stopped sleeping in his own room, but it was long before Isabel came along and took it for herself. It wasn’t too often, at first, but in the nights where his sleep was troubled with the soft cries of a little boy whose mother wouldn’t wake up. He wasn’t one to reach out for comfort, never learned how to find solace in physical contact, but he was drawn into the safety of Farlan’s bed like a moth to a flame, curling into a protective ball under a thin sheet. It wasn’t too often, but it happened enough times that Farlan was beginning to count on it. 

 

In some ways, they needed it. They only had each other and they needed it, which was what Levi told himself the night he decided he might as well move in. They needed it, both of them. He padded through the cold dark hallway and told himself this. They needed it. He slid quietly through the door and slipped into the bed and they needed it. Farlan could sleep through a raid but the weight of the body beside him lured him out of his sleep every time, and with a yawn he threw an arm around Levi, pulling him closer.

 

“Didn’t think you’d come tonight,” He murmured, voice thick with sleep but there was a smugness there like he knew otherwise. 

 

“Didn’t come for the conversation.” Levi’s own voice was without any bite--he was too tired for that--as he allowed himself to slowly unfurl and relax against the other man, dreams forgotten, body suddenly warm. Their foreheads pressed together, and when Farlan’s lips brushed against his own, he was already drifting off. He’d pretend until the next time that he hadn’t felt it. 

 

***

 

Their house hadn’t been much but it was theirs, and that’s more than what he can say for anything he’s given at HQ. From barracks to a private bedroom, it isn’t really his and it will never be. Nothing here is truly his, or anyone’s for that matter. Beds are taken and then emptied in a matter of days. People come and people die, and what little pieces of them are left behind are soon gone without a trace and it’s like they had never been there at all. It doesn’t get easier, though he’s learned control and he’s learned acceptance and he’s learned to trust that this is what’s right because Erwin believes in this cause and he trusts Erwin. This is what he holds on to after every expedition, after every death, after a rainstorm that brings back the memories of that very first one. Erwin is strong and so are the things he says and the things he believes, and if there’s hope for a better world, Levi wants it just as badly. He relies on Erwin and it’s probably a stupid idea, it’s probably a really bad one, but he does because there’s something familiar, something comforting in those blue eyes, even as they harden under the constant stress of being  _ Commander _ , as every death is suddenly blood on his hands. 

 

When they fuck it’s rough and it hurts, and that’s how Levi tells himself he’ll keep from falling in love with Erwin even though he already has. He knows that Erwin doesn’t like it, the roughness. He knows that it isn’t the way his commander wants it, that everything around them is so chaotic and brutal, that there is only room for tenderness in sex, but that tenderness will kill him if he lets it and he won’t. Erwin has control everywhere but here, and he wants to be beaten into a fucking pulp and he wants to bite the pillow under his head to keep from screaming when he comes. He wants his body to hurt and he wants to see bruises and broken skin when he takes off his clothes. If the only thing he can feel is pain, he wants to feel it always. If he’s treated like something valuable he’ll start to think he is. If he’s treated like something beloved, he’ll start to forget that he doesn’t deserve it. Not again.

 

Under his pillow, Farlan’s shirt lies neatly folded and when he feels like he might break, he runs his fingers through the fabric, searching for the places where his smell has stayed captured between fraying threads. He’s worn a hole into the sleeve and he hates it because Farlan would have hated it. He sewed it twice and rubbed the hole back in and he tells himself he’ll throw it away but he doesn’t. 

 

***

 

When it rained up top, it became a mess of sludge and shit down below. Disease spread fast enough without the added pollution, but during the rainy season, people dropped like flies and it was a different kind of dead than the winter bodies. Sickness was thick in the air, and it would persist and linger through the rainy spring into the unbearable summer heat. It would stay until the fall, and it was a wonder that anyone was left standing at all when the year was up. But the Underground was overpopulated. The poorest people had the most babies, and if you have fifteen you can hope that at least five will make it to adulthood and have another five to fifteen more. For every hundred deaths, there were just as many births, and the cycle continued because nobody up above, the rich and the noble men and women in Mitras with their big houses and beautiful clothing and tables full of food, particularly cared to stop it. If the poor stopped being poor, how could the wealthy continue to be wealthy? There is no changing the social order without destroying it, and even then it can be repaired and the cycle begins again. 

 

It had been raining for a week, but Levi hadn’t seen a single drop of fresh water falling from the sky. The sky didn’t exist in his world. Ahead, behind, and all around him, all there was only the dirt and the bodies and the rot that permeated the air, suffocating him and everyone else who had no choice but to live in it and hope it didn’t kill them too soon-- or that it would kill them faster. This was reality, and it was only escapable behind the locked door of his home that had been scrubbed and scrubbed again until he was sure that there was no trace of that rot, of death, left behind. Later, he would scrub himself, raw and red until Farlan would make him stop the way he always did, and already Levi could see that irritating look of concern and care and what he guessed could be love or something like love that Farlan would give him. And Levi would scoff and scowl, annoyed, and maybe he’d really feel it but mostly it was just nice to have him there, loving him. 

 

He clutched the small bag in his hand to his chest, covering it with his cloak as if it protect it from infestation. From sickness. They’d been surviving off of stale bread and rotting fruit for as long as either of them could remember. There were little ways, little tricks to making it edible enough, and Levi had a talent for finding the food that looked the freshest. The grocer, a bald and toothless old man with a bad habit of gambling away more than he could ever hope to actually have, owed him a lifetime of favors and although he tried to charge him every time, as if hopeful that the debt had been forgotten, Levi never paid a cent. 

 

“I’ll pay up when you can win a fight for yourself, old man, how about that.” The grocer grumbled something in response and his stale breath wafted towards Levi like an assault across a stack of browning carrots. His nose scrunched as he turned away. “Tch. Shouldn’t be too hard. All you’d have to do is breathe.”    
  
He didn’t linger long enough for the man to work out a response. The streets were crowded and the same coughing woman had been walking too closely behind him for the better part of his journey home. He could practically feel the hot sickness slamming itself against his skin, desperate to worm its way in through his pores and take him over. The sooner he could shut himself behind the lock of his front door, the better. 

 

That night the water was uncomfortably warm against his skin, but he was used to it. Cold in the winter, hot in the summer, temperature kept consistent only by the wrath of the changing seasons. He thought for a bitter moment of the people above, full on fresh food and bathed by clean water. His own bath could hardly be considered clean before he ever got in, water turning a murky grey as it filled the basin, and now-- he remembered the coughing woman, the grocer’s breath and his rotten mouth, the air thick with sickness and with pain, with death. He was swimming in it, and all he could do was scrub at his skin until it was raw and red and hope he wouldn’t end up like them. The week before a man lay out on the ground near their house for over an hour before anyone realized he was dead despite his yellowing eyes open and pointed towards their dirt sky, as if he was asking the gods why he was born at all if  _ that  _ was how he was going to die. Life wasn’t fair and it never would be, it would never be easier, not if you were weak, and Levi was not weak. He nearly took a man’s hand off in a fight, cut it like it was a log of sausage, cut it like it was the only thing that could save him. He didn’t flinch when the man screamed, but scoffed, offended that the man hadn’t foreseen this as the direct consequence of grabbing a stranger’s shoulder. Levi was not weak. He fought and he stole and he killed, he was known throughout his ruined and damned city, he was respected because he wasn’t weak like they were and he would never be. His mother died in a brothel and perhaps she was a weak as the rest of them, she must have been, but he was here, alive. He would never be weak like they were, he would never-- 

 

“Hey,” Farlan’s voice broke through, hand reaching out to take the sponge from him. With a grunt, Levi shot out an arm to snatch it back and the rest of him went with it, small body, dripping wet, hitting against the taller man who only smiled, eyes calm and kind and ready to guide him home like a light cutting through darkness. His arm was only met with empty air, the sponge held out of his reach. “Levi. Hey. You’re clean enough.” 

 

He looked down at himself, at his red and angry skin that threatened to open and bleed and let infection back in. There was no clean enough, but his arm fell limp at his side, muscles tensing at the sensation of a gentle hand touching his raised flesh. He swallowed hard and shot a glare towards Farlan, trying to force some kind of recovery. 

 

“Is some fucking privacy too much to ask for?” 

 

“You’d have to let go of me first,” He was still pressed against Farlan’s chest, his other hand still clutching the fabric of his shirt, now thoroughly soaked. “But you shouldn’t.” 

 

“Tch,” Whatever had been on the tip of his tongue was gone when Farlan’s mouth met his. He couldn’t pretend that time that he hadn’t felt it, and he didn’t particularly want to, lips parting against the clashing of teeth, the clashing of tongues. The other man’s hands trailed his narrow body, coming down to cup his ass when Levi heard the quiet splash of water and remembered, slowly pulling back with a huff of a laugh. “Let me out of this thing, will you?” 

 

***

 

He always imagined that the smell and the shadow of death would stay behind in the Underground, that someday he’d get out and leave it forgotten, for good. But the Survey Corps is nothing but death and rot, and it follows him every day. Every expedition beyond the walls could be his last, and every expedition he returns from carries with it the added weight of lifeless bodies, sometimes piled for burial in their wagons, sometimes left behind in hasty retreat. Titan snacks, an arm there, a leg here, sometimes a head or a torso. Sometimes a whole squad of soldiers. Sometimes they die on his orders, but it’s not meant to be his weight to carry. He learns this from Erwin, who carries everything for everyone else and somehow still stands upright. It isn’t fair but it never will be and it never gets easier, not if you’re weak and Erwin isn’t, Levi is sure of this-- but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to help if only Erwin would  _ let  _ him. 

 

He always imagined a house, one with a garden and a window no one would break, with nice things inside and always warm, and it was for him and Farlan and Isabel. He never gave much thought about where it would be, just that it would be above ground and it, like the old house, would be theirs. He doesn’t know what he imagines for himself anymore, that dream snapped in two like Farlan’s body, like Isabel’s head severed from her shoulders, but he figures it doesn’t matter much anymore. He was never very imaginative to begin with and it all seemed pretty pointless when his bones might be a Titan’s toothpick next time. When Erwin’s bones… but he pushes that thought away because there will never be Erwin’s bones. Levi won’t allow that to happen. Not again. He pushes that thought away because the only future he can see for himself, when he allows himself to see anything at all, is one with Erwin and it’s nothing he deserves. 

 

The expedition had been a failure, and maybe it was always going to be a failure, but Levi believes in Erwin, who dreams bigger than Levi ever could, who sees a world without Titans, a world that is big and beautiful and free. Every failure sets them back, their funding cut, the remains of their men scattered, their already dismal popularity sinking further, but even the murmurs, even the disgruntled shouting of those who don’t understand and never will because they’ve never been  _ out there _ can’t crush Erwin. Nothing can, it seems. An indestructible force-- if Levi can help it, because there are so many things in this world that can crush him like they’ve crushed so many others, things worse than Titans, things not even an army can fight against. 

 

The blood has long since evaporated but he feels it everywhere, in his hair, on his skin. Its under his clothes, covering every inch of his body and he needs it off before it soaks into his skin and can’t come out again. The water burns against his flesh and steam rises all around him like it had beyond the walls after every one of those monsters fell dead before him. It’s still taking some getting used to, a clean hot shower, after a lifetime of dirty water in a basin. It’s a luxury, one that could be taken from him at any moment, and he tends to treat it as such, getting his use out of it as quickly as possible so he doesn’t begin to depend on its presence. But it’s different after an expedition-- after one that’s failed most especially, when he can’t close his eyes without seeing dead ones staring back at him, wide and afraid and by the thousands, when he can hear the echoes of his comrades screaming through the halls, when death clings to him and whispers his name in his ear and does all it can to worm its way inside of him and there’s nothing else he can do, nowhere else he can go but if he can clean it out of him, if he could just… He scrubs the sponge against his body, teeth gritting at the sting of hot water meeting breaking skin and he knows that blood is dirty but if it comes out he’ll scrub that too, anything to get it off of him, the dirt and the spraying blood and flying limbs, Isabel screaming, he can’t save her. He can’t save them. Farlan. 

 

Farlan waving and Levi hadn’t kissed him behind the stables because they were supposed to come back, they were supposed to get out of there  _ together _ , and he can scrub and scrub for hours and clean everyone else off of him but there isn’t a single part of him that Farlan didn’t touch, but that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Years since that day, years since Levi last heard his voice and it was fading now, faster than he prepared for because he never prepared to lose him at all, and now it was just…

 

“Enough,” His body tenses at the sudden presence of another body beside him, a hand on his arm, a hand on his waist. A voice that is soft and low and wants to command because that’s what it does but needs to be the light in the dark that’s been missing for so long. “Levi… You’re clean enough.” Without a word, without a fight, his fingers relax one by one and the sponge tumbles from his hand. It drops to the floor is a sea of pink. There is no clean enough, but Erwin’s lips brush against broken skin like some kind of bandage and it’s nothing permanent but it’ll do for now. 

 

Under his pillow, Farlan’s shirt lies neatly folded, and while Erwin lies next to him in troubled sleep, Levi pulls it out and holds it to his face, the fabric rough but fragile against his skin and he thinks of Farlan’s hands and their warmth and the callouses on his fingers . It takes longer to find what’s left of him, the little traces slowly prying their way out of their woven place in the thread, the fading scent, but it’s there and it’s with choked breath and a twisting ache in his chest that Levi takes it in for hours. Erwin jerks but doesn’t wake up and despite the nightmare Levi lets him sleep, bodies pressed close together but Farlan is always there because Levi can’t let him go. 

 

He tells himself the shirt has to fucking go, but it doesn’t. 

 

***

 

“Oh MAN I’m beat!” The girl’s voice echoed through the house and, to prove how beat she was, she yawned loudly, stretching her small arms out and fumbled in vein with the mop that hit the ground with a loud  _ clang _ . Levi grimaced at the sound, not used to the extra noise in his home-- he’d been up most of the previous night staring at the ceiling, deciding that they had absolutely made a mistake letting her stay with them. If Isabel snoring and sleep talking wasn’t bad enough, Farlan, as always, was dead to the world beside him, a small puddle of drool forming in his pillow and a lazy arm thrown across Levi’s body, practically pinning him to the bed. A horrid snort came from the front room where she had passed out on the battered couch. Levi’s jaw was clenched so tight it would hurt for a good two days afterwards. She had to leave, he was sure of it. There was no other option if he ever hoped to get a decent night’s sleep again, she had to go back where they found her, and maybe that was cruel but the world was a cruel place. But he’d stumbled out of bed that morning to find her making them breakfast and even though it was so burnt it tasted like charcoal she looked so pleased with herself and so  _ hopeful  _ that he had to eat it-- it would only be a waste of food anyway, and, free groceries or not, he’d gone hungry enough times that there was very little he would willingly turn down. Somehow she’d attached herself to him already and when he looked at her he saw a kind of childish innocence, a spark of energy he was sure he himself never possessed. 

 

Begrudgingly and against his better judgement, Levi decided not to press the matter of putting her back where they found her. The kid was staying, he guessed, until she found something better to do with her time. He’d spent the better part of his afternoon showing her how to cook something almost edible and made her wash the floors-- twice. 

 

“She’s ok, I guess,” He relented after dinner while Isabel was still grunting and mumbling over the mop. He cringed at the puddle of soapy water she’d created in the middle of the kitchen, but he wasn’t about to hold her grubby little hand over it. Either she’d figure it out on her own, or she’d have to do it again. Farlan responded with nothing more than a knowing smirk, ducking down to press a kiss against the top of the shorter man’s head, getting swat at in the process. 

 

“Hey!” She didn’t get any quieter, though, and Levi knew already that she never would. “Am I gonna be sleeping on that couch forever or is there a bed in this place?” 

 

“She snores.” Levi muttered late that night, head resting against Farlan’s chest, brows furrowed. They’d put her in his old room, and that was fine. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually slept in his own bed. It seemed strange now, sleeping without Farlan at his side, drool and all. Still, shoving Isabel into her own room wasn’t enough to block out the low droning noise. “She sounds like a fucking dragon.” 

 

“Should we throw her out?” Levi gave out a soft snort, rolling onto his stomach.    
  


“Thought about it.”   
  


“ _ Levi _ .”

 

“Don’t scold me. What are you, my mother? You’re not the one who has to listen to it all ni-- what are you doing?” 

 

He gave out a sound that could only be comparable to a squawk as Farlan pinned him to the bed and held a pillow over his head. 

 

***

 

They fit together somehow, the three of them. Levi never imagined having anyone he could call family, but he figured they were his. He figured he was theirs, and it made him protective in a way he never thought he would be towards anyone other than himself. The blood on his knife was drying. Slumped over on the couch, gunmetal eyes bearing into the wooden floor, it didn't seem to matter much. 

 

“You’re gonna be pissed in the morning,” Farlan offered from the doorway. “You don't wanna ruin the thing.” 

 

“It won't be ruined.” They suffered and that was enough. It didn't matter what their blood stained, his knife, his clothes, his hands. The quiet sobs from Isabel’s room had long since turned to tired whimpers. Soon there was silence, and he waited, wondering if she'd really fallen asleep, hoping she was. “Fucking bastards.” He let the weapon drop to the floor, running a hand over his face, exhausted, hardly noticing as candlelight washed over him until Farlan’s voice was beside him, soft and warm. 

 

“She’ll be ok… Soon, yeah?” When Levi lifted his head, the other man was crouched at his feet, carefully cleaning the discarded knife. “We’ll be out of here soon. You won’t have to stick anyone then.” 

 

A small, tentative smile tugged at the corners of Levi’s mouth and he reached down to tangle his fingers in unruly blonde hair. “Yeah,” He murmured, watching Farlan polish the blade with brows furrowed in concentration, trying to do it right so Levi wouldn’t have to do it again himself later. He tried to imagine a world where they could live happy and safe, where Isabel wouldn’t come home with bruises and where Farlan wouldn’t wait up at night when Levi was out too late, worried he’d never come home at all. He tried to imagine a world that wasn’t kill-or-be-killed, a world that was just the three of them. There was a time where it seemed impossible and maybe it still was, but Farlan took his hand, the knife set aside, and pressed it to his lips, and Levi wanted that world more than anything. “Soon.” 

 

***

 

“I didn’t think you’d come tonight.” 

 

The words leave him frozen in the doorway and for a moment he forgets where he is, head spinning and throbbing, mouth suddenly dry. For a moment, the figure before him is a different man entirely, a boy really, and so is he, and the place he’s standing in is dark and cold but it’s their home-- theirs together. The words echo in his head and leave him breathless and there’s an ache in his chest that he’s all but forgotten, that’s been pushed aside and buried so it can’t destroy him. For an irrational moment he feels angry, invaded, like somehow Erwin has pushed so deep inside his mind that he’s found those memories and is using them to… to what? To hurt him? To get some kind of reaction? To--

 

He blinks, coming back to himself, to this place, to this room. To Erwin, who stares at him like he knows he’s struck some kind of nerve but doesn’t know how, who holds out an arm and waits for the smaller body to curl against his own. Levi’s legs feel heavy, tired as he crosses the room and crawls under the thick wool blanket. 

 

“Didn’t come for the conversation,” He answers, voice hollow, and it’s the gentle touch of large hands against his cheeks that allow the tension to drain from his body and he doesn’t know how long he’s been wound so tight but his eyes slip shut and finally he remembers how to breathe. 

 

“Levi…” Erwin whispers in a kind of wonder that makes his face feel hot. “You’re crying.” He brings his own hand to his face, eyes opening again as he jerks away from Erwin’s touch and all he feels is water. 

 

So he is. 

 

***

 

Under his pillow, Farlan’s shirt lies neatly folded but the smell of him is long gone and it’s with a sickening twist in his stomach that Levi realizes that he’s beginning to forget it altogether. He tells himself that now, finally, he’ll throw the thing away, but he doesn’t.

 

***

 

They slept in barracks, and for the first time in years Levi was in bed alone. He didn’t know how many men were in that cramped space with them, but it was more than he was comfortable with and the loud snores coming in by the dozen were enough to put Isabel’s snorkeling to shame. He figured Farlan was asleep already, bunked above him and out like a light as always, and he thought for a moment about climbing up and crawling in next to him. Someone started clomping around, groggy and muttering to himself and bumping into things on his way to piss and Levi thought better of it. He curled into a ball and tried to get comfortable. It proved to be useless. He was no good on his own. 

 

“You awake?” Farlan’s voice was a loud whisper, and he huffed out a relieved breath-- maybe he wasn’t not the only one after all. 

 

“Yeah. Keep it down before you wake one of these shitheads up.” The other man’s head popped in upside-down, and Levi didn’t know that he’d ever seen him look so worn, as if he’d been lying there awake for years. 

 

“You could come up for a whi--”   
  
“No.” Levi wanted to tell him how much he wished he could, the blonde’s face crestfallen. He wanted to be good with words, to have something to say to make him feel better, but Farlan was always the charmer. Levi himself was lucky enough to stammer out one good sentence without cursing or faltering and losing track of his thoughts. “Not here.” 

 

Farlan recovered with a deep inhale, trying to look optimistic, mouth twisting into something resembling the sarcastic smirk he always seemed to wear but he looked lonelier than ever. “Soon.” 

 

“Soon.” 

 

***

 

He woke up two nights later to Farlan in his bunk and he thought about kicking him out, but he slept better with his arm around him. When day broke, Farlan was gone and they pretended he was never there at all.

 

***

 

“Not here, asshole.” An open palm reached out to collide with the taller man’s chest, pushing him back. “Later.” 

 

“There’s no one here,” Only the horses and the hay and the smell of shit. Farlan had him against the wall, was practically whimpering. Privacy was hard to come by and sex was becoming something of a distant memory. One of the horses grunted. Disgusting. 

  
“Tch,” Levi cast a raised brow and a scrunched nose towards the offending animal, shaking his head. “I’m not getting fucked next to a pile of horse shit. Get--” He pushed at Farlan’s chest again, nearly choking when he grabbed hold of his cravat. “--your hands off me, you fucking pervert.” 

 

“Levi--”

 

“After.” He didn’t pull away when Farlan leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead, eyes closed in defeat and a sigh on his lips. Lifting onto his toes, he leaned into the touch. “Yeah?” 

 

Farlan nodded, face buried in his hair. “Yeah… after.” 

 

***   
  


There was supposed to have been an after. He thought there would be more time.

 

***

 

Erwin starts to forget what sleeping alone felt like, the smaller body tucked under his single arm like a security blanket every night for months. He likes to watch him sleep, when Levi does sleep. He likes the way his face relaxes, the way his body curls and straightens out again, the little sighs he makes in those rare moments when he’s at peace. Erwin likes to be there to wake him when the sighs turn to whimpers, when Levi tosses and turns and whispers a name that isn’t his, begging a dead man to return to him. He has little else to offer but comfort, if anyone could all it comfort as he bites back the jealousy that rises in him like bile, jealousy he has no business feeling, bitterness towards a man who has been gone for nearly a decade. Levi will never fully be his and that’s fine, it has to be because it’s only fair when Erwin himself has already dedicated his heart, his life, to a cause greater than either of them. He’s learned to accept it begrudgingly, to take what he’s offered because he knows it’s all Levi has to give and it’s more than he deserves. He knows this when Levi wakes, eyes wide and a dead man’s name on his lips and the expression of a child caught with something he shouldn’t have-- there’s an apology there that Levi will never say out loud, one that Erwin will never ask for because he doesn’t need it. 

 

He finds the shirt balled up in the trash the night before they leave for Shiganshina, holes patched up and holes worn in. He’s found it there before, found it again later pressed and folded under a pillow, under the mattress, under the bed. He’ll find it like he finds the patches from the cloaks of fallen soldiers, like he finds a silver hair brush that he could only assume once belonged to Levi’s mother, carefully hidden from plain sight but always close. Only the shirt winds up in the bin with crumpled pieces of paper and dried out tea bags, and only the shirt appears again later, looking worse for wear every time Erwin sees it. He wants to ask questions he already knows the answers to, he wants to be the one to put back the broken pieces, even as he breaks off more. 

 

He wants to give Levi everything he’s not able to, to put him first and to see him happy. He wants to give Levi everything he’s never had, everything he may never have, but he’s leading him instead on a mission that might kill them all, so he settles for rescuing the shirt from the basket. He’s never been so good at folding, worse now with one arm but he does his best, knowing Levi will fix it anyway. 

 

He leaves it under the pillow. It’s all he has left to give him.


End file.
